In Luke 18:9-18, Jesus told a parable about two men who went to the temple to pray: a virtue-signaling Pharisee and a miserable tax collector who couldn’t even lift his face because of his shame. Jesus’ startling judgment was that it was only the tax collector who went home justified. The assumption of many religious people is that, on some level, God’s approval is based on our personal obedience and good deeds. We’ll see that humble prayer begins where our self-righteousness ends - not with declarations of how good we are, but with desperate hands empty enough to receive what Christ has done.

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